Sacrifice

[rosada]

Dear Sparhawk/Luis (Which do you prefer?),

That goes for me too. Ditto.

Your testimony that no experience illuminated the I Ching path for you as fully as reading the text in the original Chinese carries a lot of weight. I am inspired now to at least consider looking in that direction. Have you any suggestions as to how to begin? Would you be willing to host a thread here as I am sure there are many of us here who would like to learn. Perhaps a thought/word for the day?

Encouraged by your generosity,
Rosada

 

[fkegan]

Hi Frank,



I posted a link to his site before, in a message addressed to you, in another thread, a few weeks ago. He's been also mentioned by Hilary in relation to his 'decades' concept, which, I must say, is a parallel theory to yours. He's also praised by Stephen Karcher as "one of those quiet lights that should be leading"

For the rest, the longer time flows in my studies, the more convinced I am that the key, the real 'key' to grasp the meaning of the text of the Yijing, is to immerse oneself in the original Chinese. Translations don't work and is a concept I derive from the first verse of the Daodejing. They are only approximations. I haven't found an "approximation" that comes close to the real meaning of the text. Furthermore, the original Chinese is also an imperfect and incomplete verbalization of concepts that cannot be known or communicated effectively by any other mean than personal introspection and meditation. Thus, the text is just a stepping stone to within.

In the meantime, for the purposes of sharing information and ideas (and countless silly jokes... ), we can all "approximate" to our heart's content, but, I bear no illusions of ever finding, outside of myself, a "perfect" translation for "me". Furthermore, once found, I bear no illusions of ever being able to fully, and reliably, share it with others. Only "approximate"...

Soooo, let's keep "approximating" together, dead and alive alike.

Hi Luis,
Well I got further along in the stuff than earlier times, though I still wonder where are the other pages of his text, does he ever get to an actually theory more than what is on that site, at least the part you can click to? He seems to just end up with--KWS not random-- but still hung up in the pairs. I was thinking about what made for that problem, or better how I got from there to my solution and I realized it was the matrix of the Tetraktys. Having a guide to meaning independent of the actual words or ideograms which then made the approximations of the words OK.

Bringing things back to this thread and the question of translations vs Original or at least more original Chinese...I keep coming back to my experience in Argentina (one of the mystic centers of the last century) that the human mind stores meaning not language. The appreciation of text meaning, I believe, depends upon one's sense of having a framework or some access within and through the particular words. It is that framework, not any language details, that gives the sense of being immersed in the true essence of the subject.

Judging from my experience with my Prof of ancient Indian Buddhism who knew every word in the Pali canon and its philology through those 2500 years... just having the text in modern language isn't enough either...

And from my experience with Gia-Fu, there is a somewhat different connotation in the traditional Taoist take upon the Chinese...than the Confucian and academic and literary Chinese...

Speaking of the first verse of Lao Tzu, I would interpret it differently. Not about language meaning, rather the difference between what is appropriate Taoist interpretation in any specific setting in contrast to the abstract and absolute Tao which remains with the background Void.

Ultimately, I agree it is all about the Quest within Self from the circumference of daily life in society ever deeper into concentric rings towards absolute Source or Center.
However, in a community of fellow inner-questers there are all sorts of things that can be tremendously useful, helpful, fun and exciting which makes the fact that we are each and all mortal and approximate ever less important.

Isn't that all part of our group social ritual sacrifice here...or maybe that is just my reaction to finally having found a good BBQ grill and made a dinner worthy of sharing with God (he only really cares about the smoke which we share with gusto).

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Your testimony that no experience illuminated the I Ching path for you as fully as reading the text in the original Chinese carries a lot of weight. I am inspired now to at least consider looking in that direction. Have you any suggestions as to how to begin? Would you be willing to host a thread here as I am sure there are many of us here who would like to learn. Perhaps a thought/word for the day?

Hi Rosada,

I don't know what to tell you about learning Chinese. Personally, I have many "elders" in Chinese here that know scads more than I do. I just bury my head in the text and flank myself with good dictionaries and grammar rules. The same way I self taught English, 20 years ago: by reading what at the moment couldn't understand. It seeps in. Since you are learning with a good motivation --the Yijing being it-- all the better as you are able to memorize more. That's what Charly does too, I'm sure, as well as others like LiSe, Brad, Harmen, etc.

 

[heylise]

Rosada, get Wenlin! It is indispensable for me, it is the best way to get grip on the Chinese Yi. Of course there are lots more things, but this is my base. Wenlin

Steve Marshall has a perfect Chinese text on his website: Harvard-Yenching Zhouyi

This will keep you busy for a long time! The nice thing about it is, that you can find out things as of today. I started with whole days trying to find one single character in a dictionary, but with Wenlin it is a question of minutes.

And if you want to ask a question and right away read it in Chinese with meanings of each character, I recommend San Shan Yi Jing. Great little program, I use it every day.

Happy quest!

LiSe

 

[Sparhawk]

Yes! Wenlin is something to get, I agree 100%. Great advise. I just couldn't get myself to pay for it, yet, but I will.

 

[fkegan]

Tzu in heng and sacrifice

Hi Luis,

I have been watching your dragon toasting those two ideograms for sacrifice and then I realized I have been confusing sacrifice and BBQ which made the Tzu element in them with or without arms seem a bit gruesome. Next, I remembered the content of Francis Hsu's Clan, Caste and Club that American culture is built around the voluntary relationship of husband and wife while Chinese culture was built around the clan relationship of Father and Son.

That led, at last to my noting that the tzu element in both terms for sacrifice refers to the essence of the relationship of the clan which is what one is trying to reach as the sacred goal of the sacrifice. Tzu as the mark of the revered sage in a name like Confucius, Tzu as the inherent paradox in Lao Tzu, old Son, or primal essence of the clan culture. These are all part of the recognition of the essential relationship within the Chinese clan culture system is summed up and expressed by the new born son.

I guess the American equivalent social sacrifice is the BBQ party with the trophy wife serving drinks as the husband proves himself at the grill with the smell of the smoke as his offering to heaven.

Rosada,
I never got further into Chinese dictionary stuff than L.Wieger, S. J Chinese Characters subtitle: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification. But it is an intriguing Western book upon Chinese. Of course, working from the line structure takes a lot of pressure off getting the translation of the text just right.

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

I have been watching your dragon toasting those two ideograms for sacrifice and then I realized I have been confusing sacrifice and BBQ which made the Tzu element in them with or without arms seem a bit gruesome.

Damned, primitive and barbaric Chinese... Actually, the Zi (and Zi like) component of both characters appears to be a later development and both characters have a common root in 羊. Every time I see that one, which is a sheep, I picture this:

So. I guess the Chinese have been cooking those for millenia...

​

 

[heylise]

Oh, and Rosada, don't forget Marshall's "The Mandate Of Heaven". A must, always, if you do translate yourself or not, if you want to know more about backgrounds.

LiSe

 

[heylise]

羊... Hey, didn't know that! Makes a lot of sense.

LiSe

 

[fkegan]

Damned, primitive and barbaric Chinese... Actually, the Zi (and Zi like) component of both characters appears to be a later development and both characters have a common root in 羊. Every time I see that one, which is a sheep, I picture this:

So. I guess the Chinese have been cooking those for millenia...

​

Hi Luis,
I have a tough time not thinking of BBQ too when I think of these things. Looking at your image, I can't help but notice the implicit baby-sacrifice thing in the gesture of the lamb.

Lots of folks have been cooking them for millennia. Personally, I like the line in Genesis where God only agrees to not flood mankind any more and give the rainbow because Noah's BBQ was such a delicious delight. Guess our BBQ smoke is being obliterated in the Heavens by the fossil fuel exhaust now that global flooding is back on the table.

BTW what is the etymology, the stages the ideogram goes through from sheep BBQ to heng and on? To me that is an evolution of meaning where the sacrifice started out as BBQ but later developed into a ritual celebrating and strengthening the bond of ancestral clan, father to son going back forever and forward to the next generations too.

Where is this later development of the character in calendar years--before 1100 BCE?

Frank

 

[charly]

... reading the text in the original Chinese carries a lot of weight. I am inspired now to at least consider looking in that direction. Have you any suggestions as to how to begin? ...

Rosada:

Maybe you are not yet knowing if chinese is the yours. Maybe you need something cheaper than Wenlin, there are many tools and dictionaries freely available in the net.

My advice is that if you go to do it, do it inmediatly:

HOW TO BEGIN WITH CHINESE CHARACTERS IN ORDER TO QUICKLY READ THE YI​

1) Get a reliable text:

As LiSe adviced you, begin taking it from Steve Marshall's page:

http://www.biroco.com/yijing/entire.htm​

here you have a nice text with the Harvard Yenching Zhouyi in chinese traditional characters an pinyin phnetic equivalents, you can search and copy from it and paste, say here:​

39.3
九三 往蹇來反。
jiu3 san1 wang3 jian3 lai2 fan3

2) Get tools for chinese script:

MDGB has a chinese-english and english chines dictionary and many other tools, take the «Text annotation» tool here:
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=annotate
you will see three windows, select the following options:

• «Traditional» in the 1st. window
• «Show chinese, mandarin and english - no popup» in the 2nd. window
• «Add vocabulary list» in the 3rd. window
  
• Paste the chinese characters in the 4th. window and pulse [Go] button.

The tool gives you a list character by character with the pronunciation and the main meanings, like this:
​

九
jiu3 · nine · 9
三
san1 · three · 3
往
wang3 · to go (in a direction) · past · previous · towards
wang4 · toward · (of a train) bound for
蹇
jian3 · surname Jian · difficulty · lame
來
lai2 · to come
反
fan3 · wrong side out or up · anti

Some characters can have more than one pronunciation, like 往 wang3 / wang4. Modern meanings are provided by this dictionary (CCDICT), but you can search in anothers.

3) Search meanings by pinyin, the phonetc transcription:

Say that you are interested in 往 wang3, get the following dictionary:
www.zhongwen.com
Look at the left for the option «Pronunciation» below the title «Dictionary»
It leads you to a list of word in pinyin (without numbers),like this:
​

ta tai tan tang tao te teng ti tian tiao tie ting tong tou tu tuan tui tun tuo

wa wai wan wang wei wen weng wo wu

xi xia xian xiang xiao xie xin xing xiong xiu xu xuan xue xun

• pulse the word «wang», you will get a list of all the words with «wang» and the corresponding chinese characters (only images, not characters),
• look for the shape of the character that you are searching,
• pulse that character., it will lead you to the meanings, something like this:

​

This is an image, you cann't copy/paste texs, you can copy the entire image as I did or take notes, «depart for / go toward» ...
Maybe you will not find all the characters you wish.

4) Search meanings by chinese characters,

say copy the character 往 and go to the following page:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/
paste the character 往 in the window and pulse the button, you will get something like this:​

Simplified:
Unicode := 5F80
GB2312-80 := CDF9
往
Traditional:
Unicode := 5F80
Big5 := A9B9
往
Phonetic: 王 wang2 wang4 wang3
Signific: 彳 chi4 fu2 road
Etymology: Phonetic Signific, to go toward on the road 彳
Simplification: no simplification
Cantonese: wong5
Taiwanese: ong2
ShuoWen:
之也從彳㞷聲
English Senses For: wang3
to go toward / to depart / to be bound for / formerly / past / bygone / gone

English Senses For: wang4
an adverb indicating time or direction

Character: 往 Class: Traditioal=Simplified

This is plain text with chinese characters, you can copy/paste as I did.
At the foot of this text there are all the seal, bronze and oracle characters that R. Sears could get, like this:

​

With patience, common sense and some intuition you can write your own temporary translation, now...

5) Test the yours with another biligual translations:

Here you have James Legge translation for each hexagram, the tiles are from Wilhelm/Baynes:

http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/i-ching.php​

For H.39 see: http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/yijing39.php

You will have the chinese text paired with the Legge translation (not word by word), when sliding the cursor over a chinese word you will have a pop-up window with the CDICT meanings. Clicking the character you are directed to the dictionary with the meanings, character details (like components), etymology and stroke order (not always available).

These are the 5 steps to begin working. I encourage you to try it. If you need help, ask.

Yours,

Charly

 

[heylise]

Yellowbridge is great! Thanks for that link.

I agree, much better to start with that than spending money on Wenlin when you don't know yet if you will really dive deep into it.

I have a shortcut on my desktop now, I really love it.

LiSe

 

[rosada]

I hadn't been keeping up with this thread and just now saw all your wonderful suggestions. Thank you so much. I am encouraged to look into this further.